Meth and the Middle Class

This is just one incident, but I am sure a book could be written with this title, if it hasn't already.

Afternoon shift in suburbia.  I get a call about a shoplifter at a chain department store.

I make contact with security and the shoplifter in question, a girl of about 15 years.

She is pretty, cooperative, sane.  All good here, just a low grade kid misbehavior matter, right?

Well, except one of the things we do "incident to arrest" of a shoplifter is search them and their belongings to ensure they have turned over all of the stuff that doesn't belong to them.  I put "incident to arrest" in quotes because sometimes an "arrest" is cleared by just issuing someone a ticket rather than putting them in handcuffs and taking them to jail.

Shoplifters often just get summonses.  It depends.  Do they have a criminal history with our agency?  Do they have a history of Failure To Appear to their court dates when summoned?  Do they have valid identification so we can be certain we are ticketing the right person?

In the process of searching this girl and her belongings, I find she is in the possession of a substance that she helpfully identified as methamphetamine.

What in the world is this innocent-looking kid doing with meth?

We talk about the situation.  I honestly want to know how she got involved with meth.

Meth is BAD.  Don't touch that stuff.  Not even once!!

I am thinking she will tell me she was at a party, drinking, maybe smoking some weed, and somebody got her going on some meth.  The whole "gateway drug" concept.

NOPE.

She was just given some meth by some friend of hers to try one day.  She doesn't drink or smoke weed.  But she felt the need to try meth.

WOW.

She broke my heart a little.  Ruining her life with that garbage at that age.  She was intelligent, easy to talk to, she could have done a lot with her life.

I hope she did do a lot with her life.  She would be in her early twenties now.  I know I tried to convince her of the evils of meth.  I don't know if she "heard" me.

I don't remember how that encounter ended.  I know I follow procedure and procedure would dictate that I take her to the jail, book her into juvi, then take her down to the juvenile center on the other side of town.  It seems we must have spent a lot more time together.  In fact, that meth conversation may have happened during her booking.  I don't recall.

I dropped that child with all of that potential making such poor choices off at the juvenile center and I went on to the next call.

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